ear Harry,
A novel about peeling back the surface of the normal.
I write seeking representation for my completed 80,000-word neuroscience dystopia novel, bigMind, a work of literary science fiction whose world development and sociological ideas do not overshadow plot, character, and pacing. Don’t be fooled by the genre tropes below: bigMind subverts most of the tropes that it leverages.
In a dark near-future, teenage Isaac is a member of the elite operator class, on the cusp of his Choosing and obsessed with finding autonomy from the AI implanted in him since birth. He can choose to submit himself to the neural machinations of the AI and step into his “privilege,” or he can confront his prejudice and discover who he really is without it, risking insanity and a life of near-slavery as a member of the underclass, his body remote-controlled for factory labor by the operator class to which he once belonged. But in a world where nearly everyone has fused their brain to the AI, it would seem autonomy is the one thing universally denied.
In his parents’ basement, Isaac finds a book. But writing has been forgotten, replaced by a dream-language that has subsumed and altered all human knowledge. As he presses to understand the book, the AI manipulates his emotions in ways that feel alien, allowing him to differentiate himself from it. And so he keeps pressing, questing out into the world for anything that would help him learn to read and sharpen his sense of self. In exploring the underclass, Isaac is robbed and left unconscious. Hitchhiking back, Isaac meets Sol, a brilliant teenage girl whose mother left to become an operator and whose rage-stricken father is lost to revolutionary struggle. As she teaches Isaac to read in order to learn secrets that could free her mother, they begin to fall in love. But their love is doomed.
I constructed the neuroscience and philosophy of AI that undergird bigMind out of knowledge pillaged from a degree in Cognitive Science and long research. The novel extrapolates upon today’s technologies for reading and writing to the human brain, always with an eye to limitations rather than technological omnipotence. Throughout the book, QR codes link to a soundtrack created by the electronic musician Spearfisher.
The book’s main character is drawn from my variety of personal experiences: a six-month prison stint in federal prison as a result of a protest action to close the School of the Americas, hitchhiking, hallucinogens, forced teenage drug treatments, and struggles in various social movements like Occupy. These life events are tied inextricably to my platform, glassdimly.com, where I blog as a faith-based progressive radical, contributing to HuffPo, Sojourners, ReadWriteWeb, and Justice Unbound. I sustain myself as a web developer, technical project manager, and grassroots organizer / social entrepreneur.
After reviewing your manuscript preferences, I think this book could be a good fit for you. First of all, it is not YA fiction, and I don’t think it should be marketed as such. Next, while the science is “hard,” bigMind has been written to be, above all things a fun read, so it might be something you and Brady can both dig. Which means you get points for a work of hard science fiction without having to carve through books with paper-thin characters or a flimsy plot. You will probably want to know that I submitted to Eddie and was turned down, but he received an early draft of my query letter.
Sincerely,
Jeremy John
317-966-2281
jeremiahmatthewjohn@gmail.com